Washington and its allies took advantage of the commemorations of the Battle of Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, to demonstrate their desire for re -engagement in the region.
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They all made the trip. High-level representatives of the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Japan have traveled thousands of kilometers to reach the Salomon Islands, from Saturday 6 to Monday, August 8, in order to participate in the commemorations of the Guadalcanal campaign, the first major offensive of the Allied forces against Japan during the Second World War. Eighty years after this battle, the little deprived archipelago of the end of the world finds itself, again, at the center of the strategic chessboard, courted by the great Western powers, who seek to counter the rise of Beijing in the Pacific South.
This Sunday, in the capital, Honiara, a personality is particularly awaited by the small assembly which is in front of the American war memorial: Caroline Kennedy, daughter of former president John Fitzgerald Kennedy and New Washington ambassador in Canberra . “While we all have a debt of gratitude to the Solomonais who risked their lives during the Pacific campaign, my family and I have a personal debt to two guides from the Solomon islands – Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana – who saved the my father’s life, “begins the diplomat.
These two islanders discovered, one morning in August 1943, Lieutenant Kennedy and his men stranded on an island. Four days earlier, their torpedoler had been struck by a Japanese destroyer. The eleven soldiers, who had to swim for hours in an ocean infested with sharks, are at the end of force. They entrust Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana a message engraved by John F. Kennedy on a coconut. “11 Survivors … need small boat … Kennedy”. The two Solomonais will paddle 60 kilometers to find help.
Also present in Honiara, this weekend: the assistant secretary of state of the United States, Wendy Sherman. His father was injured during the Battle of Guadalcanal, launched by the Allies to protect their logistics and communication routes and have a base from which launching reconquest operations. “Today, we are once again engaged in a fight of a different genre, a fight that will continue for the moment,” underlines the Democrat.
strategic zone
If American representatives do not target Beijing, it is good to counter its growing influence in this strategic area thanks to a policy of preferential rate and loans, that they now multiply attentions towards Small island states of the South Pacific, long neglected because it is considered acquired.
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